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How to conquer the age of fear to ignite your marketing team's creativity

July 11, 2017

United Kingdom

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By: Kate Howe

MD

gyro UK

The age of fear might be upon us, but Kate Howe, MD, gyro, explains why understanding human nature is the key to conquering our fears

The uncertainty and volatility of the world we live in means the business leaders of today are going through one of the most unstable periods as we know it. But to take advantage of a volatile environment and to thrive in times of uncertainty, CEOs need to break their fear-paralysis and enable change-makers within their organisations make decisions that are more intuitive and less rational. They need to master their fear and ignite their business’ creativity. This was the theme of the gyro keynote presentation at the B2B Marketing Ignite event, a few weeks ago in London.

My Executive Creative Director David Harris and I talked about the attitude that will help businesses rise or fall, not just over the coming years but into the future, as uncertainty settles uncomfortably over the world in which we live. It’s how we gain this knowledge and apply it that will be a key differentiator to the business.

To create changes in our organisations, we see there’s a need to engage what we like to call the mobilisers in a business, to help them ignite business creativity and break the paralysis of fear. But how do you do that? Adopt a ‘humanly relevant’ strategy to emotionally connect with people. Neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio estimate that 99% of our responses are biologically driven. Historically, survival has depended on the ability to make smart decisions, fast; and emotions shape the way we respond to new situations and new people.

This is something we demonstrated during our live Spark Neuro demo at the gyro stand – it tested advanced neuroscience technology and measured people’s reactions to a series of adverts put in front of them. Spark Neuro’s innovative technology cuts through to the emotional truth of someone’s reaction. There’s no denying the true response of your brain and nervous system. After a while, it became clear most people resonated with the same content at the same points, though there were also some wildcards. Perhaps most interesting of all were the huge emotional dips and spikes, when people were unexpectedly surprised or scared. For example, on more than a few occasions, our test subjects were interrupted by someone passing by the stand and asking what was going on, oblivious to the fact a test was happening. The reactions to this unexpected interruption differed from an emotional spike to a flat line – much like the fear, flight or fight response.

Our nature is such that our instincts override almost anything else. All we can do is understand our triggers and be mindful that there are ways around it – after all, we’re only human.

If you missed out on chatting with us at B2B Marketing Ignite, then please get in touch. We’ll help you conquer your fears.